Los Santos, SA – What images are conjured up as people gleam about Christmas, the holiday often considered “the most wonderful time of the year”? Snow covered streets? Colorful decorations? A jolly old man? His dutiful yet mischievous elves making presents? A team of rearing reindeer ready to deliver the holiday spirit far and wide? As the seasons bring on the coldest, darkest nights, many look forward to the cheer and warmth that is found during this season of giving. A time of goodwill, and peace towards all men, and all that jazz.
That is, unless you find yourself as one of the residents of Los Santos, San Andreas right now, which has descended into a state of chaos as Christmas day approaches. The city of Los Santos, usually known for its year round sun and agreeable warm temperatures, has been under medium to heavy snowfall since the beginning of December, leaving the city covered in a blanket of snow.
The San Andreas Department of Meteorology issued an AMBER weather warning at the beginning of the month, and cautioned residents of the city to exercise caution due to the slippery conditions. The department also informed that they expect the treacherous conditions to continue, and at this rate it’s fair to assume the weather will persist until at least the new year, leaving the movie capital of the country with an unprecedented ‘White Christmas’, as it so often depicts in its films.
This precarious precipitation however, seems to have had an effect on some of the city’s inhabitants. There have been reports of reckless driving, sightings of the fabled Mr. Santa Claus, elves organizing bizarre challenges, and all out brawls in the streets holding up traffic in attempts to catch loose reindeer.
In an attempt to make sense of these claims this reporter teamed up Matilda Kapow and Juan Wick to attend one of these challenges orchestrated by these supposed elves. The truth is far crazier than could have been imagined.
Elf Endangerment
The challenges the elves organized ranged from cheerfully jovial to mildly embarrassing, to downright endangering. It wasn’t uncommon for the elves to expect unprepared karaoke, or even full on reenacted scenes about Christmas. While these types of challenges seemed lighthearted in nature, the fact they were often a competition where the winner was given some form of clue and head start to find an escaped reindeer definitely left this reporter thinking these displays were more for the elves personal amusement than community bonding.
Not all the challenges were nearly as innocent. Despite often preaching about the kind of behavior that would land someone on the naughty or nice list, one challenge involved giving the participants souped up hotrods, providing them a route around San Andreas, and telling them the first person across the finish line would receive another clue. Perhaps unsurprisingly this led to nearly a dozen cars racing along the highways and roads of San Andreas. Often exceeding well above 100 miles per hour, drivers weaved around traffic, and at times tried to run other competitors off the road through brake checks or body slamming.
Yet again the elves seemed to revel in the chaos they were unleashing upon Los Santos,[…]
Local police joined the high speed caravan with full blues and twos, but it’s unclear if these officers were participating in the activities, or if they were trying to stop it, and if they were trying to stop it if they were able to apprehend any of the people involved. To add to the danger, the elves could be seen standing in the middle of the road along the route, for reasons described as being “checkpoints to ensure participants didn’t cheat”.
Once the winners of these challenges were given their prize clue, a new race began to track down the reindeer which had broken free from their captivity. Teams sprinted to their cars and waited to see who was headed where in any attempt at all to figure out where they were going. The groups tried all manner of tactics from trying to communicate over radio and cell phone, to simply tailing other cars and hoping that they could get the reindeer first simply by being there.
Once a reindeer was spotted, the madness broke into downright anarchy. The congregation and street of Rockford Hills Catholic Church became a warzone of flying fists and tackles as everyone made their claim for being the reindeer capturer. Multiple participants found themselves being run over by cars as drivers tried to make an escape. Simply grabbing the reindeer was not enough though. This particular reindeer was put into and then forcibly removed from various vehicles no less than five times before it finally met its final capture. Most of this activity took place in the middle of the snow covered street of Boulevard Del Perro outside the church, bringing local traffic to a standstill for numerous minutes as bystanders could do nothing to break up the action.
Yet again the elves seemed to revel in the chaos they were unleashing upon Los Santos, only reprimanding people for petty naughtiness like smoking cigarettes or marijuana in public spaces or use of foul language. Nothing was said or done about the animalistic behavior on display.
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
In a city like Los Santos it’d be almost mundane to see a Santa Claus, even during the rest of the year. Out of place, no doubt, but in a city of wannabe actors and in dire lack of proper mental health support, seeing a man in a big white beard and red robe isn’t unheard of. However, sometimes even those bizarre situations feel implausibly real. Such has been the case over the past weekend as multiple people have claimed to have seen the true Santa Claus roaming the streets of Los Santos.
This reporter saw what he could only describe as the spitting image of the mythical man but knew he would need someone to corroborate his findings. Juan Wick and Thomas Keisel are two individuals who stepped up to offer their own encounters with the most iconic man of Christmas.
Mr. Wick recounted that he first came the man in question while attending the grand opening of new local business Matilda’s Magic Castle. Juan said that man gave out treats to the people in attendance in the form of Naughty but Nice drinks and other specialty sweets which did resemble those found at Bean Machine down the street. While this wasn’t conclusive evidence to the identity of the mystery philanthropist, he would have another encounter with this “Santa Claus” a few days later where Juan was thanked for saving Christmas after defeating the Grunch in hand to hand combat. Santa informed Juan this act had placed him solidly on the nice list and that he could be expecting a special 1 of 1 Ubermacht Oracle with his name on the title in a number of days. At the time of writing Juan has yet to receive this gift, but appears confident that the vehicle will find him safely.
Mr. Keisel was also present at the opening of Matilda’s Magic Castle, and explained at first he was skeptical of the man in the suit.
“At first I thought it was a costume,” he explained. “There was a special discount […] if you had a costume on. But then he started going around and talking to the people, and it became more apparent there might be more to his story.
“He talked about the Naughty and Nice List, and knew some details [about people] that not everyone would know. Like things someone did.”
It’s unclear why Santa was in Los Santos, or if he is even still here. Some speculate that it could be related to the mischievous elves that have been around and the loose reindeer around the state. Perhaps a test run ahead of the big night that went awry. Or it could be that Santa felt Los Santos needed a particularly thorough double checking for his list. Either way, it would seem that the lyrics of the song are true; you’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, better not pout, because he is coming to town and he appears to know exactly who has been naughty or nice.
————-
Chris Barstow-Carson Chris is a freelance reporter. He aims to bring truth to the people through honest reporting of the unknown stories. He got his start in Liberty City where he broke the story of how the city’s biggest factory was dumping chemicals into the local water supply, which led to a formal investigation and a $5 million fine. He looks for the human story wherever it is.
